OK, lets start with what's really important tonight. It's just your money, not your life. Everybody who really loved you a week ago still loves you tonight, and that's a heck of a lot more important than the numbers on a brokerage statement. The robins will sing . . . and puppies will curl up in your lap and drift happily to sleep - even when the stock market goes temporarily insane.Louis Rukeyser putting the 1987 crash in a larger perspective ten years ago on Wall Street Week.

Psychologists have long documented the tendency of Homo sapiens to overrate his own abilities and prospects for success. This is particlulary true of the subspecies that invests in stocks and, accordingly, tends to overtradeJames H. Smalhout in "Too Close To Your Money?" in Bloomberg Personal (November 1997)(See Psychology & Behavioral Finance)

. . .today, the simple truth is that by far the greatest growth and largest total returns from stock ownership that investors can project are located in the emerging markets of the world.
In my opinion, buying a load fund is the equivalent of stepping up to bat with two strikes already against you. Your investment first has to earn enough money to cover the load, or commission cost, before it can start to work for you.